The Texas Times, Volume 27

Welcome to Volume 27 of the Texas (still not changing the name) Times! I'll begin the annual rundown by saying that 2020 brought a couple of significant firsts for us. To kick off the year, Paige and I went to our first Roaring Twenties New Year's Gala. And let me tell you, nobody does Roaring Twenties like the Topeka Ramada Inn. 

Nobody. Full Stop.

Even more noteworthy, to close out the year we took advantage of favorable tax treatment under the plague-inspired CARES Act, cashed in about half of our retirement savings, and bought a working buffalo ranch (see The Boss below with a two-year old aspiring herd bull named Samson). I don't teach in the spring semester so I'll be splitting time between Lawrence and Bell Fourche, SD (about an hour northwest of Rapid City) over the next few months. Most of you are familiar with Paige's lifelong obsession with animals and will appreciate knowing that she'll finally have a place to keep a couple of miniature horses.

So ... Yippee Kai Yay!! Or as they (we) say in South Dakota ...

Lest you think the above slogan is Photoshopped, here's one of many you've-got-to-be-kidding-me links regarding the state's campaign to wipe out meth usage.

Grown Kids

Reagan and Hunter are still living in Austin. Reagan's been out of a job since June and Hunter is looking for something a little more permanent than his teaching gig at the UT-Austin Coding Bootcamp, but all things considered they're getting along fine. The coding job market in Austin apparently is rather saturated, so if you or anyone you know is looking for a full stack web guy (Hunter) or someone with mad SugarCRM skills and an ability to interface, customer service-wise, between software engineers and actual people (Reagan), feel free to contact them directly via LinkedIn. Hadley finished up at A&M in May and is working for Jeff Hamilton's State Farm office in College Station. She's passed all of her licensing exams and such, so if you live in Texas and need a Good Neighbor, give her a call. Everybody is at our house for Christmas and we're excited about that. To celebrate, I staged a fake spontaneous picture and applied a random filter in the spirit of all things trendy ...

Non-Grown Kid

Hollis is a senior and has had a good year. He made the National Honor Choir and recently wrote a pretty solid octet for a national competition. He and seven of his friends recorded their parts separately in my basement studio. If you are interested, you can listen to it here (headphones are best). He's involved in a bunch of other junk and at this point mainly we're just waiting around to see what happens college-wise. I imagine it'll be a few months before all of that is settled, but he's excited about the next chapter of his life. He plans to major in Accounting or Finance (Hallelujah) and I imagine he'll end up somewhere in Texas. That's far from certain, though, so we'll see how things go.

Old People

OK, unfortunately we didn't really chunk it all in to buy a buffalo ranch. But would you have rather I started things off with a bunch of trite commentary about 2020? I didn't think so. Anyway, despite not owning any buffalo, Paige and I are doing well. The Business building feels like a morgue and teaching this fall left a lot to be desired, but most of the grad students adapted well and I had a good time with them as usual. I'm sure Paige would tell you that being Dean in this environment is beyond weird -- much weirder than being a faculty member, it seems -- but Life Goes On (at least until universities start going belly-up). My research is going well, we still like the people we work with a lot, and Austin Portland Lawrence is basically fine as long as you don't take it too seriously.

Random Junk

Back in January I was planning a trip to Ireland, but obviously that didn't happen. We did manage to get to Colorado for a while in May, though, which was fabulous. We started in the mountains in the middle of nowhere about 40 miles northwest of Fort Collins and then worked our way west and then south and then back home. You can get the full scoop and see a few pictures here, in case you missed it when it was fresh. I also went to southern Arizona for a few days in December to chase Gambel's quail, and that's precisely what I did. Chased them. I'd forgotten how futile all of that is without a trained dog. Morgan (RIP, 2007) was sorely missed.

Musically speaking, I've not spent much time in the studio over the past few years but things sorta feel like they might be changing. We'll see how that goes. As for new (to me) artists, in between weekly episodes of Ranger Doug's Classic Cowboy Corral (Saturday evenings on Sirius XM Channel 56) I made two discoveries of note in 2020. Discovery #1 is a two-person group from Sweden called Good Harvest. I've linked my favorite song of theirs here. They also do a terrific version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," and I've not heard anything of theirs that I don't like. So ... just press play, sit back, and enjoy. 

For maximum juxtaposition, click here to see Sierra Ferrell (Discovery #2). The difference relative to Good Harvest will shock you, but she is amazing at what she does. If you check out more of her work, you'll see that she's ... well ... distinctive.

The Year in Books mainly featured western stuff and old stuff. I think I worked my way through a dozen or so old Zane Grey cowboy novels as well as Lonesome Dove (Pulitzer Winner from 1986, highly recommended) and Dead Man's Walk (one of its prequels). I also discovered Wild West magazine, which is a terrific bi-monthly publication featuring "the history, people, places, and events that shaped the American frontier." So if that's your game, you're welcome. The main undertaking, though, was Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene. With around 1,200 pages of nine-line, fixed verse stanzas from the late 16th century, it is quite a slog. But if you're into knights and ladies and bad guys and the occasional dragon and such, it is very much worth the effort. As a teaser, here's the opening stanza:

Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,

  As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,

  Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,

  For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,

  And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;

  Whose prayses having slept in silence long,

  Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds

  To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:

Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.

Hey ... maybe we can get Sierra Ferrell to record some tunes using Spenserian verse!

In closing, I'll remind you that a few years ago I started a Prohibited Words List. The Prohibited Words List features words (1) that seem to have lost their meaning; and/or (2) that I just happen to find super-annoying. The lists from from previous years have included things like disruptive, literally, artisanal, dialogue, and optics (among others). A standard Prohibited Words List for 2020 would require literally no artisanal imagination What. So. Ever. So -- beyond the banal (which I refuse to discuss) -- I submit the following: 

• Unpack: As in, "let's unpack the problem." I guess the implication here is that once the problem has been removed from its packaging, maybe we'll be able to ascertain how best to address it. What I would really like to "unpack" is how things like this get started. Is there some Czar of Inanity position -- maybe sort of like the Poet Laureate -- where the appointee gets to decide which particular words are going to be used stupidly in a given year and then goes around giving seminars to universities and Fortune 500 companies? That would be an entertaining job.
  
• Aesthetic: As in, "I love your aesthetic." You probably know that "aesthetic" broadly refers to taste. But as of 2020, "aesthetic" apparently can point to absolutely anything. Space heaters? Lumber? Gasoline? Sure. "Ohhhhhhhh ... 93 octane ... I love your aesthetic." And if you didn't gag right there, you're on a slippery slope. 
  
• Pivot: As in, "Let's pivot for a minute and talk about new technologies." A pivot is an important piece in a mechanism. It's the point on which something turns. Critically, in basketball, pivoting improperly is bad because it results in a turnover. So ... other than just wanting to sound like you know something about sports or signaling that you read or listen to mind-numbing content on LinkedIn, why say "pivot?" Ever? Why not just say "Let's talk about new technologies" (or whatever else)? Hemingway's views on brevity probably are more famous than anyone else's, but even Orwell said "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out."

Which of course leads you to ask, "Why on earth are you still typing?"

Fair point.

Here's hoping 2021 is everything you hope it will be.

God Bless,

Mike and Paige

mw0705@gmail.com

lpaigefields@gmail.com

1118 Brynwood Court

Lawrence, KS 66049